The Spaces in Between
by Shimizu Hitomi
Summary: [FE7, KentLynRath triangle of sorts, EliwoodHectorLyn plus Male!Tactician friendship, other] Mostly Lyn oriented flash fics tracing various characters and relationships before, throughout, and after the game.
1. Names

**Disclaimer: Don't own Fire Emblem, not making money from it, blah blah.**

**Summary:** Mostly Lyn-oriented flash fics tracing various characters/relationships before, throughout, and after the game.  
**Pairings:** Eliwood/Hector/Lyn + Male!Tactician friendship, Lyn/Florina friendship, Kent/Sain friendship, Kent/Lyn/Rath triangle, Eliwood/Ninian, Hector/Florina, maybe some miscellaneous but probably not.  
**Rating:** K+ for mild language.

**Notes:** I'll be writing and posting this whenever I feel like it. There will be continuity between the various pieces -- I'm just too lazy to develop something without any real plot into a full blown story. Just think of this as gap filler for the game storyline. However, just as a warning, I haven't played FE6 (yet), which I think this game is supposed to be a prequel to, so there may be FE6 revelations regarding the characters/universe that don't quite gel with things I'll be writing here.

**Edit (9/26/06): **Found an old post in one of the forums here listing characters' ages from the artbooks, and it turns out Lyn is actually 15 during her story, not 18 as the English translation claims. As this younger age makes more sense to me anyway, I have adjusted the fic accordingly.

* * *

**1. Names**

Lyn: Leaving

She is fifteen when the bandits raid. Caught unawares, the tribe just barely manages to drive them off, but the cost is dear. Her father, their chieftain, is killed in battle; her mother lingers on for a few more days, struggling against an ugly, festering wound in her belly before finally succumbing with a half-whispered name on her lips.

In the weeks that follow, she turns her despair into rage and hatred and thoughts of vengeance. The best of the warriors of the Lorca have fallen, whether in that first attack or to injuries sustained, yet even so she thinks to gather the few who remain.

_I will be strong. I will protect my people, as my father before me did._

_I shall have revenge. For him, for my mother, for the tribe. For our people._

This she thinks, but they will not follow her. They will not follow her, mere slip of a girl, barely a woman, daughter of a Lycian, an outsider.

_Lyn, your father was a good man and strong_, they tell her. _But now he is dead, and our sons and our daughters are dead. We are all that is left, the very old and the very young, the sickly and the dying. Perhaps you cannot understand, but we can look now only to survival. There is no place here for a heart darkened as yours._

She doesn't understand. And somehow, that hurts even more than her parents' deaths. The realization, for the first time in her life, that she is alone. She does not belong.

She leaves.

Tactician: Memory

A strange girl, he thinks. Several years younger than him, by the looks of it, and claiming to be of the Lorca. Certainly she is clothed in traditional Sacaen garb, and he cannot imagine what any young non-Sacaen girl might be doing in these parts... but there is something about her eyes, her high cheekbones, the tilt of her chin, that seems to him unlike that of any nomad he has met to date.

He remembers also hearing news of a terrible raid some months ago that scattered the Lorca, if not utterly annihilated the tribe -- and didn't the Lorca dwell farther away from these mountains? -- but then, he knows little of these people of the plains save for rumor and hearsay, and it could well be that he misremembers the tribe's name.

There is so little he remembers, really.

He wonders vaguely how long he has been out, how long this strange girl has been caring for him. He collapsed from hunger, he remembers. And how long had he been without food before that?

When the girl asks his name he tells her the first thing that comes to mind, and when the bandits come and she proclaims that she is going to stop them herself, he offers his aid as a tactician. What he does, why he is here -- that much he recalls, at least. There is little need for tacticians in these times, much less for one whose history and background are completely unknown. It has been a long time since he has exercised his skills, and he supposes it is partly out of boredom and partly out of thanks for her care that he makes the offer. The effort takes much out of him, though. He has not yet fully recovered.

But he is definitely surprised when the girl asks to come along with him, when he wakes the next morning. _Get your parents' permission first_, he says, still half-asleep and only half-serious, wondering if she has any idea exactly what she asks of him.

He is startled once again when she does not answer with the expected retort about her age, but instead, jaw trembling, begins to cry. He's not really sure what to do, has never been good with women, nor crying women at that, and how the hell was he supposed to know her parents had been killed?

Partly out of guilt and partly because he does see a great deal of potential in the girl, and he really dislikes seeing such talent go to waste, he relents.

_Oh, Mark, thank you so much_.

He's not really sure what he's getting himself into, but he's willing to bet it's going to be one hell of an interesting experience.

Kent: Joy

As a young boy, he'd spent hours wandering through the castle in secret, staring at the rows of magnificent paintings that covered its walls. His father had been a renowned painter at court, but was long dead by then, of illness. He had his mother's flaming orange hair and bright brown eyes and love of horses, but from his father he had nothing but a name and what little his mother would reveal. And so during his wanderings, he would often play a game with himself, trying to guess which of the portraits had been painted by his father and which had been drawn by lesser artists, matching the name he possessed against the signatures scrawled in the corners, as if this way he could somehow come to better know that elusive, shadowy man he had never met, would never meet.

One day, he stumbled upon a dusty, forgotten wing of the castle that seemed to have seen no visitor in years but him. Upon the yellowing, cobwebby wall hung a portrait. A painting of a young woman, striking though not quite beautiful, carrying herself with pride and grace. But it was the expression on her face that struck him most -- free and untrammeled and full of laughter.

He had never seen such unbridled joy.

He remembers now wondering who she was, if his father had known her, why her portrait had been squirreled away in this secret dark corner where none could be illuminated by its brilliance. He remembers also searching for the signature, and finding written in a hand whose owner he could not ascertain only three simple words: "To my lady."

His mother remarried soon after that. To a knight, a man strict and strong yet kind. And as he began to immerse himself in training with his stepfather, he left behind his days of aimless wandering and endless halls of paintings for good, and all thoughts of the mysterious portrait fled his mind.

It wasn't until many years later that he saw that face again -- though different, harder and walled and yet at the same time more vulnerable -- and realized he had never truly forgotten it.

But this time he had a name to go along with the face. And as it slipped so easily from his tongue, the sound of it seeming strange to his ears, her face lit up for the briefest moment, and there he saw traces of that wild proud grace, a hint of joy freely gifted, just as he had gifted her _Lyndis_, returned to her a piece of what she had thought lost.

And for the first time in his life, he thinks he understands, and he thinks that he desires nothing more than to see her laugh, her heart unburdened by sorrow, nothing but happiness etched in her face.

He thinks he would give his life for her, and gladly.


	2. Weaver

**Disclaimer applies.**

* * *

**2. Weaver**

Tactician: Blue

She'd wanted him to be her teacher, but as the days pass after they set out, he finds himself more often the student instead. During the days she shows him how to hunt and track the Sacaen way, so that he might not succumb so easily to hunger in the future; at night they lie awake by the fire long after the moon has risen and she tells him stories of her people, the words spilling from her mouth without prompt -- awkwardly, at first, but building steadily into a rushing river of colors and memories.

She teaches him many things about the land. Here is where the phantom stallion runs with his herd, she'll say, or the roots of this flower are good for fevers, but this one makes the horses sick. And it occurs to him that it is no mere adventure he is on, no silly whim of an innocent girl, but something at once both simpler and yet grander, a journey with no beginning and no end.

One evening at dinner she presents him with a simple bracelet, woven in a colorful triangle pattern he has come to recognize as a standard Sacaen design.

"Blue is the color of Father Sky," she says. "And orange the color of Brother Sun." She pauses a little before continuing, a shy smile playing about her lips. "And green for our beloved plains."

And the thought drifts unbidden into his mind then, a half-realization -- _Ah, how lonely this child has been_ -- and he smiles back, not unkindly, as he accepts the gift.

"Thank you," he says, and is surprised to find that he truly means it.

Kent: Green

The man they find accompanying Lady Lyndis -- the tactician Mark, as Lady Lyndis introduces him -- unnerves him at first. Mark speaks little, and only with Lady Lyndis, and he wraps his tall but scrawny figure ever in a ragged dark green cloak that hides his face and muffles his voice. The self-professed tactician is the exact opposite of Sain, who shares his colors but nothing else, and Kent thinks that perhaps this is what unsettles him. He has been traveling with Sain so long, that silence has become alien to him.

He tries to make conversation with the man, the first evening after their meeting, if only for the sake of politeness, and partly in attempt to ignore Sain's continued unabashed flirting with the Lady Lyndis, even now that they have confirmed her identity and status. He admits, also, to a modicum of curiosity. (Doesn't Lady Lyndis realize the impropriety of traveling alone with a strange man?)

And so he asks, "Where do you hail from, Mark? I cannot place your accent, and you do not seem Sacaen to me."

"I hail from no land, sir knight," comes the quiet reply. "I have been a wanderer for as long as I can remember, and can claim no country as mine."

But what kind of life is that? he wonders then. Solitary and empty and filled with long stretches of silence, perhaps. Where is the meaning in such a life, a life without responsibility, without duty, a life in which only one's own survival matters? That is no life, he thinks, but mere existence. And that seems to him, somehow, sad.

"Then you have no place to call home," he blurts out suddenly, and flushes when he realizes what he has said.

But before he can apologize, the other man says, "No, I do not. Is it so wrong?"

And there is no malice, no edge in his voice, only simple curiosity.

And because Kent is a knight, and knights do not lie, he admits, "I cannot say. It is strange to me."

"I see," says the tactician, fingering something tied about his wrist, and then there is nothing left to say.

(The next day, Kent asks Sain where his home lies -- for he realizes that despite all the years they have known each other, he has never asked -- and Sain looks at him strangely before answering cheerfully, "Why, home is where my heart leads! Wherever the beauties are, I go! Wherever my lovely ladies call home, I call home! Wherever --"

Kent hurriedly shuts him up before their companions overhear.)

Lyn: Red

Red is a color of much ambiguity among her people. Red for blood that is shed in death; red for blood shed in the birth of new life. Red for fire that burns and destroys; red for fire that cooks and warms. For some it is an ominous color; for others it is an auspicious color. But above all red is the color of fate, and fate is above all else fickle. And so the Sacaens prefer their blues and greens and browns, the colors of Sky and Earth, constant and eternal.

These thoughts and others run through her mind after she first meets the two knights in Bulgar. The first, the one with the looser tongue, is adorned in green, a good color. But the other -- she has never seen anyone in so much red (_save for the bleeding, the dying_), and so when she receives the news they bring her, she thinks only, _Ah, thus is red the color of fate_, for the news they bear is double-edged indeed

The green knight catches her staring at his companion in the days that follow. "Ah, you wound me!" he exclaims. "Am I not more interesting than my grumpy friend?"

"What?" she says, flustered. "What are you talking about?"

"You have been staring at him all day... I really cannot see why!"

She frowns, struggles for a suitable explanation, but in the end all that comes from her mouth is, "He is so red!"

It is the green knight's turn to stare, before he bursts into loud, helpless laughter that causes both the tactician and the red knight ahead to turn and look at them. The green knight waves cheerfully, trying to control his guffaws and his horse, who has been startled by the noise and his rider's sudden movement. The red knight glares before continuing down the road, followed by the tactician.

She feels her cheeks heat up, though what she said is true. From his near-red hair to his armor and his tall gelding and his saddle and the weave of his saddle blanket and his face when he is angry or embarrassed --

The green knight winks and leans over from atop his mount to whisper in her ear. "They call him the Crimson Knight nowadays, you know. Just as I am known as the gallant Emerald Knight! But when we were younger, and less experienced in the ways of the world..."

He pauses dramatically.

"They mostly called him Carrot-top."

After that, her thoughts no longer turn to fate and slaughter when she looks at the knight in red.

Sain: Threads

The night Lyndis receives the Sword of Spirits, she tells them all a story.

Sain doesn't remember much of it afterwards because he's paying more attention to her lovely voice and the play of shadows upon her delicate face than to what she's actually saying, but one thing in particular sticks.

_The Weaver sits at her loom, and she picks out threads and weaves them into her carpet of our lives. We know not what threads she may choose, nor what patterns they shall create. But no matter what, the patterns she weaves are beautiful beyond words._

He finds himself wondering if the Mani Katti is the same -- a blade woven together from the great spirits of the past. But then he shakes his head. What a foolish notion!

He has never given much thought to fate -- indeed, does not believe in it, as often as he tells women that their meeting, their love is destined. He finds it romantic, very romantic, in fact, but little more.

He kind of likes this Weaver lady, though.

After all, a woman so talented must have beauty to match her skill.

* * *

Yeah, Sain just runs away with this series of ficlets. Heh. For those anime fans who are reading this, in my mind he's totally Tamaki from Ouran Host Club. XD

The Sacaen "mythology" that first makes an appearance here and will be expanded on a little more later, maybe, is drawn from my own thoughts and from various existing mythologies. (I think of Sacaens primarily as a mix between Mongolians and the plains-dwelling Native Americans, with a few minor Bedouin quirks.) The theme of weaving in mythology and folklore is a pretty common one -- here I was thinking primarily of the three weaving crones in Norse and Greek mythology (the Moirae a.k.a. the "Fates", and the Norns), and to a lesser extent the popular weaving/storytelling metaphor. If you're interested I suggest checking out the Wikipedia entry "Weaving (mythology)".

Yes, I am a mythology geek.


	3. Reason

**Disclaimer applies.**

**Notes: **I found an old post in one of the forums here listing characters' ages from the artbooks, and it turns out Lyn is actually 15 during her story, not 18 as the English translation of the Kent/Lyn/Sain dialogue claims at the end of Chapter One, Footsteps of Fate ("... who eloped with a nomad some 19 years ago", "... a granddaughter of 18 years."). Which first of all makes more sense to me, as Lyn has always struck me as being rather more vulnerable than an eighteen-year-old, though strong in her own right, of course -- and second of all no longer contradicts the Wallace/Kent supports where Lady Madelyn is stated to have eloped _seventeen_ years ago, from presumably the time of Eliwood's route ("When Lady Madelyn eloped 17 years ago..."). I don't know WHY the translators decided to tweak her age (and messed up in the process of doing so), though I can guess... At any rate, I have adjusted the fic accordingly, so don't be surprised if you find references to fifteen/sixteen-year-old Lyn in future chapters. Doesn't make any difference in characterization, because like I said, I've always felt Lyn to be younger, but I'm just anal when it comes to details. Further age discussion is located in the endnotes of this chapter.

* * *

**3. Reason**

Kent: Pride

His mother had not quite approved of him becoming a knight, though neither had she attempted to dissuade him from that path.

"A knight is wedded first and foremost to lord and duty," she'd told him, mere hours before the knighting ceremony, faint traces of regret lingering in the corners of her mouth. He had been old enough by then to see, and wonder.

"Mother --" he'd began, but when she shook her head he had fallen silent.

"Remember this always, my son. Remember what binds you to your lord."

Her words, he remembers, had tainted his excitement and anticipation with a dim sense of unease. Doubt had come to him then, for the first time in his life.

Yet what else could he have done? His mother was a lady of the court, but she was not so highly ranked or respected there that her son would ever amount to much either, in those scrutinizing eyes. Her renowned unladylike bluntness, combined with her scandalous affair and marriage years earlier, only served to reinforce that truth. Knighthood was the path that had been laid at his feet ever since he was a child, ever since his mother had remarried. It was an honorable path, and he could either choose to walk it proudly or in shame.

In the end, he had chosen honor.

Florina: True

The soil of Ilia is rocky and barren, cold and bitter, and Ilians in turn grow hard and lean as their land. The thought often occurs to Florina that she is no true Ilian, unlike her sisters, who are proud and tall and strong. For Florina has always been a frail child, delicate in frame, with a heart too soft and trusting for such a harsh land.

Above all, she is a dreamer, and here there is no place for dreamers.

Even so, Florina loves Ilia. It is her home as much as it is her sisters', perhaps even more so. For it is duty more than love that binds Fiora to this place, and for as long as she can remember, Farina has always been trying to escape. But Florina loves Ilia, for even in the starkness she sees beauty and wonder around every corner. There is beauty simply in survival, and despite the bitter cold, there is true warmth in the hearts of the people.

It doesn't really surprise Florina when Lyn tells her the truth of her heritage, for Lyn is Lyn, proud and tall and strong like her sisters. But Lyn loves the plains as Florina loves the mountains, and so Florina knows that no matter what happens, Lyn's heart shall remain true.

Tactician: Masterless

The knight named Kent asks him once why he insists on referrring to himself as an apprentice tactician, when he is clearly far beyond the age of a typical apprentice, and more than capable in his own right.

"Until I prove myself," he replies simply, "I remain but an apprentice."

Any other man might have responded that he had already proved himself many times over, that he could have easily found employ under any number of kings and great lords -- but Kent is nothing if not tactful, and does not press any further.

But it is rather strange, even he must admit to himself. Their ragged band of misfits accumulates more and more stragglers as the days pass. It is like a dream, except more like a nightmare, one in which he feels strangely empty of fear. A band of not-quite-children, he thinks fleetingly, one morning, before anyone else has woken. Dorcas is his only elder here, and only Kent and Sain are anywhere close to him in age... though Sain hardly counts.

I am the invisible chaperone at a bloody banquet, he thinks, or maybe a goddamn masquerade ball, a party of children playing at war, but there the analogies fail him and he thinks only: _I am their tactician_, and _How the hell did this happen?_, and _Why am I still here?_

Lyn is the first to wake, with a flash of a true smile directed at him, a sight all too rare these days. Lyn -- with hope in her dark eyes and determination etched in her back, straight as steel. Even now he cannot bring himself to call her Lyndis, Lady Lyndis, Milady, as the others do. She is no lady, this child of the plains. The wind whispers through her hair just as freedom sings within her bones.

He considers telling her this, but as he opens his mouth, Kent wakes, and wakes Sain with him, and in the ruckus that ensues, the rest of the camp is roused as well.

He shrugs, and turns his thoughts to the coming day.

Lyn: Anchor

She had always taken love for granted, she realizes one night, long after everyone else is asleep. Her mother, her father, her tribe -- somewhere deep within her heart, she had always thought, _forever_.

Now, she does not know. Love is uncertain. Life is uncertain. Everything is uncertain. Even the grassy plains and the endless sky may one day be swallowed by darkness and flame.

Hate, she knows now, can be just as powerful as love. And not even hate is needed for one to kill.

She remembers an old childhood tale about the Drifters, those who wandered, lost, between this world and the next, unable to or perhaps refusing to acknowledge the embrace of Mother Earth. Jealous husbands, heartbroken mothers, warriors who forgot the reason they fought, and thus faltered when they gazed into the eyes of Death.

She is lost, she thinks. Kent and Sain and Mark -- they guide her along her way, through this strange new world, but it is not enough. Some days she feels light and giddy just thinking about it, for when she reaches out into the darkness, she grasps onto nothing, and is at once both terrified and calm. Everything seems strangely unreal.

When the bowman rides over upon his horse the next day, she finds herself more surprised at his familiar bearing than at the fact that she has just narrowly escaped death. She had not expected to meet a fellow Sacaen here, of all places, and suddenly reality seems to jolt back into place. She does not stop to consider the sudden emotions that rush through her. She knows only that she feels suddenly stronger, fiercer. A dark cloud has lifted from her, and its unveiling reveals a world outlined in far sharper clarity than before.

A thousand blessings upon you! she cries, savoring the familiar sounds of her native language upon her tongue.

And a thousand curses upon our enemy! comes the reply, and she smiles and her sight blurs for the briefest moment before she blinks it away.

It feels like homecoming.

* * *

Ages, continued: Kent and Sain are listed to be in their "20s", and Rath is listed to be 18. All three Pegasus sisters are in their "10s", as is Hector, though from support conversations it's safe to assume he's the same age as Eliwood, who's listed as 17. Again, all of these ages are presumably for Eliwood's route. 

For further clarification I'll list what I'm taking to be their exact ages in this fic, as "twenties" and "teens" are pretty ambiguous: Rath is _currently_ 17, Eliwood and Hector are 16, and Lyn is 15. I'm placing Kent and Sain at exactly 19 during Lyn's story, and 20 during Eliwood's route. (They may be in their twenties by then, but they don't come across as THAT old, either. 22 at _most_, imo.) Florina is currently 14, and during Eliwood's route she and her sisters will be 15, 17, and 19. (Florina strikes me as younger than Lyn by a just a bit, and spacing two years apart for the sisters works out perfectly.)

Hopefully this isn't confusing. If anyone wants the link to the forum post with the artbook info, just email or pm me.

And in case anyone's wondering, this tactician is in his mid-twenties. I'd say 23-24ish, but it's best left ambiguous. :P


End file.
